


Help, I'm Alive

by Canarii



Series: Hide and Seek [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:10:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/289927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canarii/pseuds/Canarii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I tremble<br/>They're gonna eat me alive<br/>If I stumble<br/>They're gonna eat me alive<br/>Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?<br/>Beating like a hammer?<br/>Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer<br/>Hard to be soft<br/>Tough to be tender</p>
            </blockquote>





	Help, I'm Alive

_I tremble  
They're gonna eat me alive  
If I stumble  
They're gonna eat me alive  
Can you hear my heart beating like a hammer?  
Beating like a hammer?  
Help, I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer  
Hard to be soft  
Tough to be tender_

 

Sally's a sensible girl. That's what people have always said anyway. Sensible, responsible, bit of a dreamer maybe, but a good head on her shoulders. Good instincts. Good girl. Sensible.

But sensible girls don't make the choices she's made. Sensible girls don't leave behind the new life they've worked so hard to create to run off with a stranger. Sensible girls don't go traveling the universe with little but their wits and whatever can fit in a knapsack. Sensible girls move on when the curtain drops, or at least try to. And sensible girls certainly didn't go walking on strange city streets on their own after dark.

But it wasn't supposed to be that way. She'd planned carefully, she was always careful. But she hadn't planned for the train to be delayed. Hadn't planned to be arriving in Cardiff just before nightfall. Hadn't planned on her poor sense of direction and pride ending with her in exactly the wrong place.

So in the end, running for her life was really the only part of the equation Sally could have anticipated.

Thankfully, where it didn't in her desicion-making, 'sensible' did extend to her footwear, and the sound of her flatheeled boots on the concrete echoes down the alleyway like the beat of a constant drum.

A small, bitter part of her, would say this feels like old times, the running, the adrenaline. But it's not the same. Not the same without someone to hold her hand, to guide her around the darkened obstacles and pull her back up when she'd inevitably stumble.

She doesn't even know what she's running from, and she doesn't care, (all she knows is that it's got teeth and a face no mugger could ever have.) She doesn't need to know, can't afford to look behind to check and lose sight of the treacherous path her feet are finding on the cracked, wet pavement. The rain must have just started, but already it's pouring down, puddling in cracks and potholes. Sally's in good shape, (and how could she not be, with the life she'd been leading up until recently...) she's healthy, long-legged for her small frame, so running isn't a problem. It's just a question of running fast enough. Can't see, can't know, but she must be losing ground because she can hear its laboured raspy breathing over the sound of her own heart jackhammering her chest. Heart. Singular. Human. (And wasn't that always the problem in the end?)

Her lungs are starting to ache, legs numbing below the knee with every beat that her feet connected with the ground. It's cold, and for the first time in what must have been the longest three minutes ever since she took off, Sally realizes that the pressure she feels isn't the heady rush that usually comes with the prospect of danger. It's plain, crippling, fear.

It isn't until her boot connects with a bit of scrap metal and the impact sends her sprawling that it even occurs to her that she can't outrun this thing.

She lands hard, really hard, gasping out of shock more than anything as a particularly sturdy bit of alley debris makes contact with her ribs. But there's snarling behind her and no time to shrink back from the pain, no time to adjust. Just react. Move, Sally, you're not dying here. You've seen planets birthed and burning and had tea with Emily Dickinson and you are not dying in some alley in Cardiff. Roll over, crawl, towards the wall, pull yourself up, forget your ribs, face this, face it.

Her hands scramble in the dark, in the wet, fingers closing around the first solid object she can find. And not a second too soon, because there's hot, rancid breath on her neck and she knows that when she turns, she'll be greeted by a vision of a dark maw full of teeth, going for her throa...

WHAM.

Contact. Right between the slathering jaws, the piece of piping connects solidly at the fleshy join where they met at the back of the thing's mouth. With a howl (or maybe a snarl) of rage and pain, it staggers back. She's little shocked herself at the force of the blow, but even as that tiny flush of hope spreads over her she knows it was nothing more than a lucky shot. She won't get another.

It's coming back around, just angry now, but she's on her feet, one break, out the front of the alley, last chance, just one move. One step, over, the planks, the debris...

Down again, dizzy, warm raindrops on her face. Tripped, stupid, so stupid. Facedown, just tired. A screech of tires, and it's there, it's turning her over and all she can think is that having her throat torn out will be a hell of a lot quicker than half the ways she could have died with Him. She dares to open her eyes but it's body's blocking the dim streetlight. How bloody apt.

She drops the pipe.

A single shot.

It's weight disappears, along with it's hot breath.

A wheezing howl, footsteps pounding in the alley. Voices.

Some how, she pulls herself up, head swimming. Not quite sitting, but longer stretched flat in the alley either. And somehow through the pain that seems to have migrated from her ribs to her scalp, the blur becomes shapes, and the shapes become people. One in particular.

"Oh, you are kidding me." Sally grumbles with a wince, pressing a hand to what she now realized to be a nasty cut by her temple. The shapes turn, each seeming to notice her for the first time. The closest one's coat billows when he moves, returning his gun to it's holster as he does so. All sets of eyes return to her, including his. She coughs through a dry throat, then almost laughs, leaning back heavily against the alley wall.

"Captain Jack Harkness, just the man I came to see."


End file.
